On Monday, 4 March 2019 12:18:58 CET Masayoshi Mizuma wrote:
> SUPERMIN_KERNEL and SUPERMIN_MODULES don't work to guestfish.
> 
> Since guestfish sets --if-newer parameter to supermin, so the environment
> variables are not used under the following conditions.
>   - the output directory exists and,
>   - the dates of both input files and package database are
>     older than the output
> 
> To solve that, rebuild the output it when SUPERMIN_KERNEL or
> SUPERMIN_MODULES are defined even if --if-newer is set.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Masayoshi Mizuma <[email protected]>
> ---

This approach switches from one side of the situation
(= SUPERMIN_KERNEL and SUPERMIN_MODULES are not taken into account by
--if-newer) to the very opposite side (= setting them always rebuild
the appliance).  I do not think this is a good idea, since the current
situation is easy to workaround (`rm -rf $(guestfish get-cachedir)`),
while using a different kernel will always rebuild the appliance after
this change (and thus slow every run down).

What is the goal here? Make sure that --if-newer actually rebuilds an
appliance when changing the values of SUPERMIN_KERNEL and
SUPERMIN_MODULES (even setting/unsetting them)?

I agree that supermin ought to do better in --if-newer checks: for
example, removing any of the files of a ext2 appliance (e.g. "root",
or "kernel") will not make --if-newer rebuild the appliance.
Maybe a better idea could be to record files/timestamps for appliances,
so supermin can easily check what's missing/older.

-- 
Pino Toscano

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